Cannabis Use and Mental Health Problems

van Ours, Jan C.; Williams, Jenny

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Cannabis Use and Mental Health Problems

CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP7384

40 Pages Posted: 26 Aug 2009

See all articles by Jan C. van Ours

Jan C. van Ours

Tilburg University - Department of Economics; University of Melbourne - Department of Economics

Jenny Williams

University of Melbourne - Department of Economics

There are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: July 2009

Abstract

This paper investigates whether cannabis use leads to worse mental health. To do so, we account for common unobserved factors affecting mental health and cannabis consumption by modeling mental health jointly with the dynamics of cannabis use. Our main finding is that using cannabis increases the likelihood of mental health problems, with current use having a larger effect than past use. The estimates suggest a dose response relationship between the frequency of recent cannabis use and the probability of currently experiencing a mental health problem.

Keywords: cannabis use, discrete factor models, duration models, mental health

JEL Classification: C41, D12, I19

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

van Ours, Jan C. and Williams, Jenny, Cannabis Use and Mental Health Problems (July 2009). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP7384, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1462013